Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

Dallas Buyers Club Synopsis

Spirit Award winner Matthew McConaughey portrays real-life Texas electrician Ron Woodroof, an ordinary man who found himself in a life-or-death battle with the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies. In 1985, Ron was blindsided by being diagnosed as H.I.V.-positive and given 30 days to live. Ron grabbed hold of non-toxic alternative treatments from all over the world by means both legal and illegal. Seeking to avoid government sanctions against selling non-approved medicines and supplements, he established a “buyers club,” which fellow H.I.V.-positive people could join for access to his supplies.

After nearly a decade of being trapped in thankless, critically-reviled romantic comedies, the Texas star has rejuvenated his life as an actor and tonight has won the Oscar for Best Actor in a leading role thanks to his performance in Dallas Buyers Club.

There's an air to Dallas Buyers Club's Oscar campaign that embracing the film means embracing the queer community that was horrendously slaughtered by the AIDS epidemic, and still faces struggles in modern America. But the truth is Dallas Buyers Club actually re-enforces a dangerous message that not only excuses homophobia, but actually promotes it.

Even if he wasn’t such an intelligent and humorous guy, McConaughey could still pull anything off after uttering those words that began his career back in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused. (Hell, he could probably make Wooderson-y comments about high school girls and still come out ahead.) Throw in a “Just keep living,” and you’ve got viral video gold.

But seriously, when did it become routine for people attending awards ceremonies to just shout comments at actors on the stage? It’s disgraceful when supposed “professional” critics do it. It’s not much better when regular attendees take to heckling.

Dallas Buyers Club isn’t the feel good movie of the year. It’s not a war cry for equal rights or a sobering historical narrative about the early years of HIV prevalence. It’s a film framed in rapid cut-tos, telling the story of an angular man with a vision that knew how to do a lot of things, but never how to give up.

My argument is that the category should have shifted from five nominees to three. That would increase competition. Imagine how tight this year’s Oscar race would be if Academy voters could only choose between Gravity, 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle? Now THAT’s a race!

While the Academy Awards is the ceremony sure to earn the most ink over the coming weeks, the GLAAD Media Awards are an honor held more closely to the hearts of some. GLAAD's ceremony shines a spotlight on a part of the artistic community that has been forced into the shadows for too long.

In the film, McConaughey plays Ron Woodroof, a hard-drinking, drug-taking sex fiend whose party lifestyle is cut short when he’s diagnosed with HIV. Eventually, Woodroof becomes a crusader for more effective drugs that actually treat AIDS patients but that, for whatever reason, aren’t approved by the FDA in our marketplace.

Every year, the Academy Awards and its voters honor screenwriters old and new by handing out the statue for the Best Original Screenplay, often while employing a lackluster script of its own. While it remains to be seen what kind of material host Ellen DeGeneres will be given, you can bet than the stage direction “This is the part where you dance” will show up more than a few times. Probably in between jokes about Christian Bale’s gut, or his beard, or his hair.

Today we feature Best Supporting Actor. This is a thornier pack than last year, when all the nominees were previous winners, limiting the amount of actual competition between participants (Christoph Waltz ultimately won). This year there are no previous winners, three first-time nominees, and two second-time honorees.

The Screen Actors Guild held their annual award ceremony this evening, and long story short, the voting members really didn’t favor one specific film. In fact, the only movie that took home multiple awards was Dallas Buyers Club. Both lead and supporting actors Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto were honored by their peers, though that love didn’t carry over to the overall film honors, which went to American Hustle.

The Golden Globes announced their winners on Sunday, revealing the biases and beliefs of the ninety-something member Hollywood Foreign Press. As much as they get mocked for their ability to be bought and paid for, the Globes often look like a solid predictor for how the Oscars will fare.

McConaughey and co-star Jared Leto were on hand to schmooze Academy members. And their enthusiastic MC not only shared her thoughts on the film, but promised that if the Oscars didn't do right by McCaughey, she would.

In the narrative categories, few of these nominees can be called surprising as just about all of the above have received critical praise and Oscar buzz. The dark horse contender in the mix is Peter Berg's Lone Survivor, which has had a soft open over Christmas and will expand next week.

SAG isn’t always right. Last year, the group accurately predicted that Ben Affleck’s Argo would have a big night at the Oscars. But the year prior, SAG went with The Help over the eventual Best Picture Oscar winner, The Artist.

This week we're packing our trunks full of illegal prescription drugs and crossing the U.S.-Mexico border as we join the Dallas Buyers Club, which was both a real group that got HIV-treatment drugs from Mexico and also a new movie starring Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto and Jennifer Garner. To join us we've brought in Nathaniel Rogers of The Film Experience, and because he's with us and David isn't, we even get to indulge in a little Oscar season talk. Nobody tell David!

Based on a screenplay by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, the film tells the story of Ron Woodroof (McConaughey), a wild-living Texas electrician and bull rider who one day discovers that he has been diagnosed with HIV and given only 30 days to live. Unwilling to go down without a fight, and also unable to afford the only medications available to patients, he travels down to Mexico where he discovers a full spectrum of holistic treatments...

Dallas also confirms what many of us suspected: McConaughey officially leaps into this year’s Oscar pool with both feet, and the significant “splash” he generates should ensure that other aspects of Vallee’s stirring production get “wet” in the process.

Matthew McConaughey had so many strong performances last year, in so many different films, that it seemed possible to many of us that the actor could snag his first-ever Oscar nomination. It didn't work out-- and damn you, Academy, for not even bothering to nominate "Ladies of Tampa"-- but McConaughey is back this year with what might be his strongest role yet, in The Dallas Buyers Club

Last month Matthew McConaughey shocked us all, shedding serious pounds for The Dallas Buyers Club, where he'll play an AIDs patient in the early days of the epidemic. Soon thereafter, we got a first glimpse of his co-star Jared Leto in costume and looking gaunt, but now Leto's giving us all a closer look at the weight he's dropped...

As a frontman of the rock band 30 Seconds to Mars, Jared Leto is no novice when it comes to sporting eyeliner. But for his role in Jean-Marc Vallée's scandalous biopic The Dallas Buyers Club Leto was asked take his androgyny act a few steps farther, playing an AIDS-afflicted cross-dresser called Rayon.

That Magic Mike physique is out the window, isn’t it? It kind of has to be. Woodroof – if you don’t know his story – was an electrician who contracted AIDS, and was told by his doctors to give up hope and await the inevitable. He didn’t. Instead, he explored the covert world of underground pharmacies that dole out experimental (but effective) HIV drugs that aren’t approved in the U.S.

The report describes Bernal's role as "showy," and as an "effeminate member of the club" in which other AIDS patients also receive the treatment drugs. Dallas Buyer's Club has been a passion project for McConaughey for years, and clearly after this year's success of Magic Mike and (to a lesser extent) The Paperboy, McConaughey is in a position where he can get the movie made